Mahr
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A mandatory gift from the groom to the bride upon marriage in Islamic cultures
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/maːɐ̯/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Mahr is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 14Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 15K
- CZCzechia1 in 52K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 280 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,500 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)1. 'alp'; 2. 'Weichselzopf'; 3. likely also spatial/occupational use
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mahr is read
(measured from records)Mahr is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English56%
A mandatory gift from the groom to the bride upon marriage in Islamic cultures.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German23%
1. 'alp'; 2. 'Weichselzopf'; 3. likely also spatial/occupational use
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
topographic name from Middle High German mer, mar ‘lake’, ‘marsh’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
mare, incubus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Arabic6.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mahr in Arabic.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Mahr is found
(measured from records)Mahr counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Mahr | 125 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 121K | — | Mahr | 15 |
| US United States | 1,831 | 1 in 182K | 1.9K | Mahr | 280 |
| AT Austria | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Mahr | 63 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 269K | — | Mahr | 44 |
| CZ Czechia | 206 | 1 in 52K | 207 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 87 | 1 in 97K | 87 | Mahr | 18 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Moritz Mayer-Mahrb. 1869DEGerman pianist und music teacher (1869–1947)
- Kurt Mahrb. 1934DEGerman novelist (1934–1993)
- Timothy Mahrb. 1956USAmerican musician
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Mahr come from?
- 1. 'alp'; 2. 'Weichselzopf'; 3. likely also spatial/occupational use Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Mahr?
- In German /maːɐ̯/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Mahr mean?
- In English, A mandatory gift from the groom to the bride upon marriage in Islamic cultures.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Mahr?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.5 thousand people named Mahr in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mahr. After it come Pakistan, United States, Austria and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Mahr?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,831 people named Mahr in 2010, about 1 in 182 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mahr?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mahrThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Mahr”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.